At 24p

To remain in a group of like minded society keeps us powered up and also helps us to pay attention to details. My perspective of cinema is greatly influenced for similar reasons. I have had the privilege to travel from being a critic; to becoming an explorer, a learner and again being a critic sometime.

"A critic earns the right to analyze the merits and demerits of a film only when he has true understanding of the art. He must know and be able to judge every aspect of film-making, from writing the scenario to editing. In my view, a critic performs a useful purpose only when he is able to build a bridge between the director and the audience. That is his main responsibility."

-- Satyajit Ray

This quote is from his book "Speaking Of Films"...
Some may argue that cinema is no form of an art. If I consider it in a positive sense, I will look into it as "cinema is not only a form of an art; Its a culmination of art, science, imagination and much more..."

If you try to live by the words of the legend before looking into cinema; or try to make a movie by yourself, not only you start wearing a new glass to look into it, but will you become detail oriented too. You also get the benefit of learning the technology and management part of it...

"Naturally our films appeared lackluster in comparison, and it seemed that we still had a great deal to learn" 

 -- Satyajit Ray

At 2010 We may be improving; But, The world of 24p here, definitely needs to travel miles ahead...

I do not need iPhone!!

iPhone is no big deal... (Just wanted to start the post like this, just to make it sound that iPhone is not as cool as it may have been presented to the market and also to capture your attention)

Apple always comes up with deliberate shortening in supply, just to play with the market sentiment and increase the demand for their product to a higher level. Am not arguing, anything on their quality deliverable. Its a marketing gimmick.
Example : If 100% is needed, Apple satisfies 90% that moment. Its then advertises / make known to people that the demand for Apple product X is on greater demand. This increases the demand for product X to a greater + greater demand. To a common user, having an Apple product X becomes cool...

For markets like India, China, Brazil, Argentina; iPhone is still expensive. Also you do not get the latest and the greatest ones as do you get at US / UK. Well, the necessity for iPhone here is also not great. People here (mostly) buy for necessity than for luxury and try to get more value for every penny they spend. Enterprise users, may still prefer to use Blackberry, as it is great in inputting more data rather than just outputting / reading data. (Opinions may differ. Iam not an expert).
Apple is very much close ended. It doesn't allow anyone to break in and come up with major customizations, unless you would be ready to pay them. (Android is a open OS!!!)

Its also weird that iPhone Apps certification procedure is not clear cut. The documents that you get googling to look into the certification procedure is vague (not sure whether it is deliberately made that way). Apple also puts a clause that, accepting or rejecting an app, is under sole discretion of Apple and they need not explain "why an app is rejected?".. (Well, Apple is a big guy, and I guess, they should have lot of people who can be assigned to this job, if their is not someone available already..). Their are also apps available that makes no sense at all.
1) Fat Burner V2.0 - Download this app, put it on top of your belly, work the app, the phone starts to vibrate and apparently is supposed to burn your fat.. :-o (Still Amazing is, it has Version 2.0 :-P)
2) Iam Rich - Just download this app for $1000, have it on your iPhone to show you are rich.. :-o (I guess Apple removed it off late)

Android is still more open... If the right vendor is available, Android mobile would be the right choice.. :-)

cartoons and cartoonists

Day to Day happenings in a software corporation/ sometimes political and governmental, can no well be represented than is done in Dilbert. I always feel that anything expressed in images with few sentences in a conversational format catches the memory immediately. Cartoons / any sort of animations are good inventions in the visual communications area. And characters play a very special role.

Cartoons are great in communicating messages very clearly and precisely. One who is my favourite in this area of creating cartoons which deliver meaning and appeal to general public is cartoonist Madan. Not sure how many would have heard about him .

"Geekandpoke" is another such place to find amazing cartoons. I have always found it interesting. Login to try it out.

Am open ears to listen to any of your suggestions on following similar other websites / cartoons / cartoonists which you think might be interesting too ...

chinese martial arts movies

Think of Martial Arts -- You will think about Chinese movie...

Chinese Martial Arts movie may not be that bad (Is there a pun / no pun in what I say?).
Unless you know chinese (cantonese / mandarin) you might not understand what the character speaks in the movie. Well for these kind of movies, you really do not need to understand the language though.. ;-) You very well understand the movie otherwise..

The concept in these movies are kind of weird... Its flying style kungfu, drunken style kungfu, dancing style kungfu, magical kungfu and what not.??
"Martial arts" have a good place in market. People buy the idea of it.
As an effort to make it more acceptable, it gets dubbed in English to reach worldwide audience. These movies are also dubbed in regional languages like Hindi, Tamil, Marathi,Punjabi etc to attract the local audience... and gets telecasted in couple of the TV channels, as 8PM movie shows...

Its worth noticing that the concept of rigorous exercise, standing upside down, stricter chinese government, shaolin temple etc etc gets sold too ;-) (Ex: Lengend of Red Dragon -- starring Jet Li)

It is also known that actual information subsides / gets lost in translation...
Changing the dialogues to suit the local slang, customising the dialogues to new generation audience, is what the movie distributors do to make it more appealing...
If you actually watch these movies in regional language (and have the patience to continue to watch), you will have a good laugh at it...if nothing else...
L-Cube (Laughter Lengthens Life)